


Race You

by orphan_account



Category: White Collar
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-04
Updated: 2012-04-04
Packaged: 2017-11-03 00:34:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/375099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter comes to terms with his feelings for Neal, but is unsure of how they'll be received.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Race You

When Peter arrived at the office that morning, it was a beautiful day. The sunlight was streaming softly through the window and hitting the various empty desks. The whole room just looked… Happy. He tried to feel happy, just for the sake of matching the scene.  
He meandered through the haphazard arrangement of desks and up the stairs to the little balcony outside of his office. He didn’t look into his office yet, nervous. Instead, he went to the coffee maker, and he made himself a steaming cup of the crappiest coffee he could manage. It wasn’t hard, really, not with the instant coffee always found in the office. It was a murky brown colour, like coffee should be, but it was a lie. It didn’t taste like real coffee. That drink was nothing compared to the stuff Neal lets him drink at June’s in the morning. 

Neal. Peter knew he’d screwed up this time. Now that Neal’s sentence was officially over, Peter had managed to convince Neal to stay with the FBI as a consultant, receiving a real pay cheque at the end of every month. As much as he was living a life of luxury with just the allowance given to him by the FBI, it was almost beyond the limits of Peter’s imagination what Neal could do with a regular salary. He couldn’t see how much more dapper and gentlemanly he could become. That had gone south quickly. 

Neal and Peter were best friends. Peter thought that was enough to keep Neal with him at the FBI. He was overconfident when he thought maybe Neal enjoyed the cases and the company enough to want to stay and continue, as they had been when Neal had been Peter’s prisoner. 

Apparently not. 

They had decided that if Neal ever wanted to leave, all he had to do was give Peter a sign. Anything, just as long as he would get the message and know that nothing was wrong. 

Peter had tried to understand that Neal might want to leave him. He may have the desire to go places and see things he hadn’t had the chance to when he was on the run. No matter how relaxed Neal was as a criminal, he hardly had the time or resources to stay in the same place for as long as he’d have liked. 

Neal had always talked about England. He had a strange fascination with the place. It was one of the few places he never went for his ‘work’ all that time ago. He talked about doing the whole tourist bit around London, and then moving on to Scotland. Edinburgh, Peter remembered. He had always had some kind of romantic notion about Edinburgh. 

Peter and Neal had sat in Neal’s apartment so many times, just talking about places they wanted to go, things they wanted to see in their lives, and Neal kept bringing up Edinburgh. Peter had been there before, on a vacation with El. He understood the appeal. Peter’s place had always been Amsterdam. He would talk about it just as passionately as Neal had talked about Scotland. He told him that when he finally found the person he wanted to spend the rest of his life with, Edinburgh would be the first place he’d take them; as a sort of test. He wanted to see if they felt the same as him about the beautiful city. They would drink beer and talk for hours after work. Neal sometimes insisted on fine wine, but Peter was more of a beer guy. Behind his first day at the FBI and the day they brought Satchmo home, those nights were getting to be some of the best of his life. Sitting and dreaming while talking to Neal was almost a form of therapy after a hard case. He had read somewhere that imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia, but really Peter saw it as a beacon of hope. It was something to aim for. Thinking about what could be gave him a great escape from what was sometimes. 

Peter stood and thought about those nights for a while, leaning on the bars of the balcony staring out over the empty office below him. No one was in yet because it was six o’clock in the morning. Peter had been unable to sleep last night, thinking about how badly things had gone. He had tossed and turned before finally giving in and just getting dressed, looking back at his empty double bed. The other side hadn’t been touched in just under a week.

He thought El suspected something long before she asked him about it. They had been slowly drifting apart for a while now. Peter just wasn’t as invested in the relationship as he once was. For the longest time they were the perfect couple. All their couple friends wanted to be them and even Neal was envious after his relationship with Sara fell apart. That didn’t last long, though. It was not too long after Neal’s sentence was up that things went to hell. After being faced with the prospect of losing Neal, Peter became distant and El grew frustrated with him. He was frustrated with himself. He didn’t know what he was feeling. He loved El, he was sure of that; he just wasn’t as in love as he used to be. Their relationship was more similar to that of best friends than husband and wife. As much as he hated to admit it, he was beginning to feel something for Neal, especially after being faced with the reality of Neal possibly leaving him.

When she asked him about it, he was very apologetic, but there was nothing he could do to help feelings. 

“Can I talk to you for a moment?” El had asked when he arrived home from Neal’s one night. He felt happy after spending the evening with Neal, and slightly drunk.   
“Sure honey, what do you want to talk about?” In his state, he genuinely didn’t realise what El meant when she said she wanted to talk.   
They sat down on the comfy sofa, with Satchmo at their feet, in silence for a time. El seemed to be gathering her thoughts. Finally she broke the quiet with a simple question.   
“Do you love me, Peter?” She looked like she really didn’t know the answer.  
“Of course I do El, you know that.”  
“I know you love me, but I mean do you love me?” She exaggerated the love the second time. This one caught Peter off guard. He wasn’t so sure any more. His silence seemed to be enough for El. A tear began to fall from her eye and she broke eye contact with him for a moment to look at Satchmo, who was walking away, seeming to get the message that they needed to be alone.   
“Do you love him?” El was looking at Peter again, with a sort of pleading look on her face. She was asking for the truth. Peter was quiet for another moment, but eventually he just sighed and looked at his shoes.  
“I don’t know. Maybe,” more tears trickled down El’s cheek and she choked back a sob, “Know that I would never cheat on you, though. No matter what I felt for him, I would never.”  
“I know that,” she whispered, “You’re too good for that. I just need you to know, that I love you, but you don’t have to stay. If you’re not happy, I’m not happy.” She continued to cry, sobbing at this point, unable to look at Peter.   
“Honey, I’m so sorry” Peter was crying too by now, feeling much more sober than he had just minutes before. 

El had gone to stay with her mom after that. Peter had never felt worse about anything ever. He wasn’t sure where to turn. He didn’t know what Neal would say, and he couldn’t talk to Jones. He guessed Diana would be someone to talk to, considering the situation, but he couldn’t face her. He hadn’t told anyone about El leaving, and because they were such a good couple, and he knew Diana liked El. They were good friends. There was only one person left to talk to. 

“Mozzie?” Peter had knocked on the door of the warehouse Mozzie was currently (temporarily) calling home. He knew he wouldn’t be there after Peter’s visit. He couldn’t allow his sanctum to be ‘contaminated by suit’. It had taken enough effort to find him in the first place; he couldn’t imagine what it would be like trying to find his new place if he needed to talk again.   
“Suit. How the hell did you find me?!” He couldn’t look more surprised to see Peter. It was even weirder to see him alone without Neal.   
“That’s not important Mozzie, I just need to talk to someone, and then I promise I’ll leave and let you pack up and move on to the next place, okay?”  
Mozzie looked suspicious, but he nodded, “What’s this about? Trouble in paradise? Is it Mrs Suit? I haven’t spoken to her in a while. I’ve been busy. We need to catch up.”  
He hit the nail right on the head. “Yeah Moz, it’s about El. I don’t think you’ll get the chance to catch up anytime soon. She’s staying with her Mom.”  
“What happened?” Mozzie looked genuinely concerned for a second before seeming to remember that he was supposed to be completely against the Suit family and his face returned to a blank, impassive expression.   
Peter explained about the conversation that led up to El leaving, and Mozzie’s expression changed from one of boredom to one of shock.   
“You mean to tell me that you, Suit, are in love with NEAL CAFFREY? The man who embodies everything you’re not? I have to tell him about this.”  
“No! Moz, you can’t. I don’t know if I love him yet. I just think I might. I totally shouldn’t have come to you about this,” he whispered the last part to himself, pinching the bridge of his nose, “I think I do, but I don’t know. I have no idea how Neal would react to this. Could you find that out for me? You know, and report back?”  
Mozzie looked at him sceptically. “You think I work for you, suit? A lot of people, my people, require my services and are willing to pay handsomely for them.”  
“Think of it as a favour to Neal. If I know how he would react, then I can stop being super awkward around him, and we can go back to some kind of semi-normalcy. Okay?”  
Mozzie nodded and ushered him out, before retreating back into the warehouse, presumably to pack. 

That brought Peter back to the office, where he was done thinking and he’d finished his crappy coffee. There was nothing left to distract him from going into his office. His palms were beginning to clam up as he washed his mug and made his way slowly over to the office. He pushed the glass door open, still not looking until he had to. 

There it was. The sign he had spent the last half hour with his back to trying to avoid. He knew it was there as soon as he decided to go to the office early. He wanted to get it over with before everyone else could come in and see his emotional breakdown. 

It was a hat. Neal’s best hat. It was black and had very faint pinstripes on it. There were no signs of wear and tear at all, even though Neal was sure to wear it at least twice a week. It was so well taken care of, so loved, that Peter knew this was the sign he had feared. 

He almost began to cry, but managed to stop himself purely out of pride. There was no one else around, but he still managed to contain himself. Neal wasn’t okay with it. Neal didn’t love him back. This crushed him more than he could ever say in words. He hadn’t had high expectations. All he wanted was for Neal to accept the fact, and move on. It was an impossible dream for his feelings to be reciprocated, but he had desperately hoped Neal wouldn’t leave. 

He reached down and picked up the hat, not really knowing what he intended to do with it, when something dropped out. He bent down to pick it up and he was sure his heart stopped when he turned it over to see what it was. 

It was an open-ended plane ticket. To Edinburgh. On the right-hand side there was a small white post-it note with two words quickly scrawled on it in pink highlighter pen, Peter saw the same pen it was written in on his desk just next to where the hat had been. It said, “Race you.” 

Safe to say he bolted from the office and down the stairs faster than he thought he was capable of after leaving a similar post-it on his office door. His note said, “Gone to Scotland. Be back soon”. Good thing he had saved up vacation days.


End file.
